"Melek Ta'us" ("The Peacock Angel") by visionary artist Paul B. Rucker
This painting inspired my search for the Blue God of Judaism. For the full story, see the post The Convergence--How It Started.
Monday, September 13, 2010
An Early Inspiration for the Search
"Melek Ta'us" ("The Peacock Angel") by visionary artist Paul B. Rucker
This painting inspired my search for the Blue God of Judaism. For the full story, see the post The Convergence--How It Started.
The Convergence—How It Started
Recently, someone asked me, “What got you interested in the similarities between Judaism and Hinduism?” I explained to her that a number of streams converged to account for my interest.
First Stream. In 1995, I became praying Sefer Tehillim (the Book of Psalms), a work contained in the Tanakh, which most Christians refer to as the Old Testament. Each day, with my mother in mind, I prayed ten psalms (16, 32, 41, 42, 59, 77, 90, 105, 137, 150), which the Hasidic master Rabbi Nachman of Breslov (1772-1810) identified as having healing power; he gave them the name Tikkun HaKlali (the Complete Remedy). As I became more immersed in the world of the psalms, I began to notice that they describe the Divine in very anthropomorphic (human-like) terms.
For example, in Psalm 18:7-10, we read:
In my distress I called on the Lord, cried out to my God; in His Temple He heard my voice; my cry to Him reached His ears. Then the earth rocked and quaked; the foundations of the mountains shook, rocked by His indignation; smoke went up from His nostrils, from His mouth came devouring fire; live coals blazed forth from Him. He bent the sky and came down, thick cloud beneath His feet.
Ears? Nostrils? Mouth? Feet? Slowly, over time, I made room in my imagination and consciousness, as had the ancient Hebrews, for a Divine form, masculine as well as feminine. The psalms alone refer to the Divine’s eyes, ears, nostrils, lips, mouth, face, arm, hands, right hand, feet, wings, and pinions.
Second Stream. On 15 August 2007, I was reading the online BBC article, “Minority targeted in Iraq bombings,” about four truck bombs that exploded in Northern Iraq, killing hundreds of the Yazidi. The article described the Yazidi as “a small, ancient, heterodox sect,” which is “a blend of Zoroastrianism, Islam and other faiths.” It went on to say that “they revere an angel in the form of a blue peacock.” I was angered and disgusted that once again the enemies of religious / spiritual pluralism had struck, and at the same time I was fascinated by the “angel in the form of a blue peacock.” I learned that this angel is known by the name Melek Taus.
My fascination increased when my search led me to the painting “Melek Ta’us” (“The Peacock Angel”), a creation of visionary artist Paul B. Rucker.
http://www.paulruckerart.com
Through Paul, with whom I have had incredibly rich conversations, I learned of other blue god traditions, such as the Feri. When I discovered that Yazidism contained various Jewish elements, I began to wonder whether Judaism had ever thought of the Divine as blue.
Third Stream. My interest in the Divine form in Judaism led me to the mystical work Shi’ur Qomah (The Measurement of the ‘Divine’ Body), which more than likely was composed in Babylonia between the 6th and 7th centuries C.E. Drawing, in part, on what appears to be ancient source material, this work describes, measures, and names parts of the Divine’s masculine form / body, even calculating the distance between various parts.
Relying on The Shiur Komah: A Critical Edition of the Text with Introduction, Translation and Commentary by Rabbi Martin Samuel Cohen, with whom I have had the pleasure of corresponding, I discovered that the author of Shi’ur Qomah quoted verbatim five verses from the Tanakh in describing the Divine form; those verses are Song of Songs 5:10, 11, 12, and 13 and Daniel 10:6. The Hebrew of Daniel 10:6, “ugviyahto ch’tarshish” (“his body was like tarshish”), occurs in all five recensions of the Shi’ur Qomah. “Tarshish,” as my research shows, was understood as a bluish stone in antiquity. The authors of Daniel and Shi’ur Qomah, by using this Hebrew term to describe the Divine’s masculine form, are saying that the Divine’s masculine form is blue, which my examination of talmudic and midrashic works confirm.
Upon learning that tarshish comes from Sanskrit, as do the Hebrew sapir and tekhelet, which convey the blueness of the Divine’s accoutrements and abode, I eventually turned my attention to Shiva, and the similarities between Him and YHWH began to emerge and continue to do so. The purpose of this blog is to provide a forum for the sharing of these and other similarities.
First Stream. In 1995, I became praying Sefer Tehillim (the Book of Psalms), a work contained in the Tanakh, which most Christians refer to as the Old Testament. Each day, with my mother in mind, I prayed ten psalms (16, 32, 41, 42, 59, 77, 90, 105, 137, 150), which the Hasidic master Rabbi Nachman of Breslov (1772-1810) identified as having healing power; he gave them the name Tikkun HaKlali (the Complete Remedy). As I became more immersed in the world of the psalms, I began to notice that they describe the Divine in very anthropomorphic (human-like) terms.
For example, in Psalm 18:7-10, we read:
In my distress I called on the Lord, cried out to my God; in His Temple He heard my voice; my cry to Him reached His ears. Then the earth rocked and quaked; the foundations of the mountains shook, rocked by His indignation; smoke went up from His nostrils, from His mouth came devouring fire; live coals blazed forth from Him. He bent the sky and came down, thick cloud beneath His feet.
Ears? Nostrils? Mouth? Feet? Slowly, over time, I made room in my imagination and consciousness, as had the ancient Hebrews, for a Divine form, masculine as well as feminine. The psalms alone refer to the Divine’s eyes, ears, nostrils, lips, mouth, face, arm, hands, right hand, feet, wings, and pinions.
Second Stream. On 15 August 2007, I was reading the online BBC article, “Minority targeted in Iraq bombings,” about four truck bombs that exploded in Northern Iraq, killing hundreds of the Yazidi. The article described the Yazidi as “a small, ancient, heterodox sect,” which is “a blend of Zoroastrianism, Islam and other faiths.” It went on to say that “they revere an angel in the form of a blue peacock.” I was angered and disgusted that once again the enemies of religious / spiritual pluralism had struck, and at the same time I was fascinated by the “angel in the form of a blue peacock.” I learned that this angel is known by the name Melek Taus.
My fascination increased when my search led me to the painting “Melek Ta’us” (“The Peacock Angel”), a creation of visionary artist Paul B. Rucker.
http://www.paulruckerart.com
Through Paul, with whom I have had incredibly rich conversations, I learned of other blue god traditions, such as the Feri. When I discovered that Yazidism contained various Jewish elements, I began to wonder whether Judaism had ever thought of the Divine as blue.
Third Stream. My interest in the Divine form in Judaism led me to the mystical work Shi’ur Qomah (The Measurement of the ‘Divine’ Body), which more than likely was composed in Babylonia between the 6th and 7th centuries C.E. Drawing, in part, on what appears to be ancient source material, this work describes, measures, and names parts of the Divine’s masculine form / body, even calculating the distance between various parts.
Relying on The Shiur Komah: A Critical Edition of the Text with Introduction, Translation and Commentary by Rabbi Martin Samuel Cohen, with whom I have had the pleasure of corresponding, I discovered that the author of Shi’ur Qomah quoted verbatim five verses from the Tanakh in describing the Divine form; those verses are Song of Songs 5:10, 11, 12, and 13 and Daniel 10:6. The Hebrew of Daniel 10:6, “ugviyahto ch’tarshish” (“his body was like tarshish”), occurs in all five recensions of the Shi’ur Qomah. “Tarshish,” as my research shows, was understood as a bluish stone in antiquity. The authors of Daniel and Shi’ur Qomah, by using this Hebrew term to describe the Divine’s masculine form, are saying that the Divine’s masculine form is blue, which my examination of talmudic and midrashic works confirm.
Upon learning that tarshish comes from Sanskrit, as do the Hebrew sapir and tekhelet, which convey the blueness of the Divine’s accoutrements and abode, I eventually turned my attention to Shiva, and the similarities between Him and YHWH began to emerge and continue to do so. The purpose of this blog is to provide a forum for the sharing of these and other similarities.
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